Ruwen cycled through all twelve Fortification poses, saturating the flesh around each Meridian with Spirit. Slowly his body would absorb the Spirit and strengthen, but the process took time, and he didn’t know a quicker way to Fortify.
Carefully, Ruwen sat. He could keep all twelve Fortifications going at the same time if he didn’t move much. Before he left the privacy of Shelly, he would look through A Worker’s Guide to Harvesting, the book that had glowed warmly on his first trip to Blapy and would only open with Spirit. He hoped the book would help him increase the pace of his Spirit training.
But first, while Ruwen Refined Spirit into Essence and Fortified his body, he needed to distribute his attribute, Ability, and spell points. If the mine turned out to be dangerous, he wanted to be prepared.
Chapter 13
When Ruwen reentered the Material Realm a day ago, he’d created a prioritization process to distribute his attributes before making any changes. Now that he’d switched from Observer to Fighter he needed to do that again.
When Fighters dinged a new level, they automatically received two points in Stamina. This was one reason they were so hard to kill. The other two attribute points were flexible and might go in Strength or Dexterity depending on the type of Subclass they chose.
The Worker Class already gave Ruwen a point in Stamina and Strength per level. So he just needed to figure out the best way to place the remaining four points he’d receive, two from Worker and two from Root.
Ruwen thought back to yesterday on the hilltop before the fight with the Bone Sculptor and revisited his prioritization logic. This time his two chosen Classes overlapped, and both his automatically placed Worker points would benefit his Fighter Class.
The terrible debuffs Ruwen had experienced when his attributes dropped below ten on his Ascendancy Day were still fresh in his memory. So regardless of priority, all his attributes needed a small buffer to keep that from happening again.
With the new Fighter Class, Ruwen reconsidered maximizing a couple of attributes at the expense of the other four. But, unlike most people who encountered similar challenges every day, he never knew what might happen. His life since Ascendancy had been a whirlwind and having a weakness would almost certainly be deadly at some point.
Those who maximized one or two attributes had an advantage over their opponents if the situation favored them. It also made them vulnerable, but only if their opponent figured out how to exploit their weaknesses.
The Fortification Ruwen was doing right now already provided some buffer. Every time he leveled his body, those points went into every attribute. So this process automatically kept him somewhat balanced.
Since Ruwen had the Fortification bonuses, he decided, like before, to use a more hybrid approach. He could emphasize his essential attributes while not letting the non-critical ones fall too far behind.
Ruwen created three attribute lists in his head: critical, important, and minor.
Under critical, Ruwen placed Stamina. Stamina would keep him alive and added to his Energy, Resilience, and Endurance.
For important attributes, Ruwen listed Intelligence, Strength, and Dexterity.
Many of his new Fighter spells, while powerful, consumed a lot of Mana. Until he could use Spirit to cast spells, he needed to rely on this limited Mana. Intelligence also increased his Cleverness and Perception. His Cleverness stat, in particular, had benefited him many times.
Dexterity benefited Ruwen’s Unarmed Combat, Step training, Energy, Armor Class, Critical Chance, Dodge, and Perception.
Strength received a point every level automatically because of Ruwen’s Worker Class, and he probably wouldn’t add any more. His Void Band made Encumbrance a nonissue, and while Strength benefited Endurance, so did Stamina, which he preferred to emphasize for the obvious benefit of Health Points. He had ignored Power Strike before, but now as a Fighter, it had more relevance since its damage would stack with all of his other Fighter capabilities.
That left two minor attributes: Wisdom and Charisma.
Wisdom almost made it to important because it directly affected Cleverness and Resilience, both of which had saved his life. The days after his Ascendancy, when he’d suffered from the Wisdom debuff Foolish, had been truly painful. But unlike Intelligence, Wisdom didn’t affect his Mana pool as it did for Hamma and the Order Class.
Wisdom would remain the most important of the minor attributes, since Ruwen couldn’t always rely on Hamma for common sense. He needed Wisdom of his own to balance out his Intelligence.
That left Charisma. Ruwen had to admit he cared more than he should about how he looked and how people reacted to him. The truth was he couldn’t ignore Charisma because it affected his Persuasion stat, and if he meant to lead, he’d need that.
So with every level, after the automatic points in Stamina and Strength, Ruwen would add another point to Stamina, one to Dexterity, one to Intelligence, and alternate the last point between Wisdom and Charisma.
Ruwen opened his Profile and looked at his current attribute values. Leveling to twenty had added one to Strength and Stamina automatically, and he had four left to spend. When he’d chosen Fighter, it had activated the five levels of abilities the Divine Amulet had given him. One of those abilities was Endure, and it added ten percent to Strength, Stamina, and Dexterity.
Attributes
Strength: 38
Stamina: 53
Dexterity: 51
Intelligence: 34
Wisdom: 22
Charisma: 20
Before Ruwen had died, he’d leveled eighteen times as an Observer. Since the Root Class gave him two attribute points per level, it totaled thirty-six attribute points that he could redistribute if he wished. When he focused on the Redistribution Points entry in his Profile, it stated he could only do this once.
Dexterity had too many points for his current build. Using his prioritization system as a guide, he removed eleven points from Dexterity, dropping its value fourteen points because of his ability modifiers, which brought Dexterity even with Strength at thirty-eight points. He
